Group says it will release information on Supreme Court Justices if reforms aren't made.

Early Saturday morning, members of Anonymous claimed to have brought down ussc.gov, the website for the United Stated Sentencing Commission, an independent arm of the federal judicial branch responsible for setting sentencing guidelines. ZDNet reports that the site was replaced with a message from Anonymous citing the death of Aaron Swartz as the motivation for the attack. The website has since been taken offline. Anonymous also claimed to have pilfered information about the Supreme Court Justices, although the nature of that information—and the accuracy of that claim—remains unknown.

According to Bloomberg, Richard McFeely, executive assistant director of the FBI's Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, responded with a statement Saturday morning: "We were aware as soon as it happened and are handling it as a criminal investigation. We are always concerned when someone illegally accesses another person's or government agency's network."

While the Commission's site is offline, the message that Anonymous posted has been reproduced elsewhere. The message claims that the site was a target because of its symbolic meaning as well as the kinds of people who visit the site. “This website was also chosen due to the nature of its visitors. It is far from the only government asset we control, and we have exercised such control for quite some time,” the note said. It went on:

There has been a lot of fuss recently in the technological media regarding such operations as Red October, the widespread use of vulnerable browsers and the availability of zero-day exploits for these browsers and their plugins. None of this comes of course as any surprise to us, but it is perhaps good that those within the information security industry are making the extent of these threats more widely understood.

Still there is nothing quite as educational as a well-conducted demonstration…

Through this website and various others that will remain unnamed, we have been conducting our own infiltration. We did not restrict ourselves like the FBI to one high-profile compromise. We are far more ambitious, and far more capable. Over the last two weeks we have wound down this operation, removed all traces of leakware from the compromised systems, and taken down the injection apparatus used to detect and exploit vulnerable machines.

The group also is reportedly distributing encrypted files named after SCOTUS Justices, but it has not yet released a key or given a hint as to what might be contained in the files. “At a regular interval commencing today, we will choose one media outlet and supply them with heavily redacted partial contents of the file,” the note on the downed USSC site read. Still, Anonymous said, “It is our hope that this warhead need never be detonated,” referring to the encrypted information in nuclear metaphor, before asking for reform of the Justice system.

The problem is federal prosecutors; not the Supreme Court. Though they are their OWN problem separate from the federal legal witch hunters. Usual anonymous hypocritical/misdirected righteous indignation

And they'll just fade out again, and it'll be like nothing happened. Nothing changes with these sorts of hackings. They just flex their ability for a bit while people more or less try to ignore their antics or find them amusing, and the gov makes them look like kids that need a good banning from their favorite video game for 'sploiting.

Whether their actions are right or not, the very existence of PETA should be message enough to the world.

It sounds stupid no matter what name you substitute. The existence of a specific idea means nothing, unless you can show how it relates to whatever it's supposed to relate to.

No matter how it sounds, it's true. PETA has a president and a general structure; it is a defined organization. Anonymous is essentially a digital mob. Some claim to be spokespeople for the mob, and some claim to be influential within the mob, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a mob: members come and go freely depending on their interest in the cause, and those who stand out have little control over the mob itself.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a movement, but it certainly represents an idea. It's not a new one, though: it's the idea of strength in numbers, and the recognition that working together even loosely can make change happen. Beyond that, though, anything is game. The mob called Anonymous occasionally stoops to some petty activities, like harrassing people on social networks, and occasionally it stands up for some lofty goals, like decrying groups who aim to lock down the internet. Such is the nature of a mob with largely undefined, anonymous members.

Do they really think this is going to be helpful to them? Are these kids really so naive as to think the Feds don't know all about their silly little game? This isn't going to win them any favors. It just makes them look like what they are: Idiots with an agenda.

Unless they were able to nab the email archives or working directories of the justices it seems unlikely they would have anything worthy of being called a "warhead".

Seems like they're posturing and hoping to start a occupy-style protest movement, or this could be the start of another summer of fun like Lulzsec had last year - but all that really came out of those stunts was prison time and I can't imagine any more would come of this.

This could keep Swartz on the news long enough for people to remember to care at the very least. Even if it is all posturing on their part there are much worse ways to draw the medias attention to a valid cause.

This could keep Swartz on the news long enough for people to remember to care at the very least. Even if it is all posturing on their part there are much worse ways to draw the medias attention to a valid cause.

Which version of his memory are you talking about?

The fantasy version where he was facing prison time for violating a ToS?

Or the real version where he was facing prison time for breaking into MIT and illegally wiretapping their network?

Even if it's "tearing down a poster" in a virtual space, it still involves a version of trespass and vandalism — both of which can be felonies.

Both of which are always felonies when occurring anywhere near a computer because a bunch of laws from the 80s which federal prosecutors love to add to their "make anything a federal crime" docket of laws like mail fraud and wire fraud

This could keep Swartz on the news long enough for people to remember to care at the very least. Even if it is all posturing on their part there are much worse ways to draw the medias attention to a valid cause.

Which version of his memory are you talking about?

The fantasy version where he was facing prison time for violating a ToS?

Or the real version where he was facing prison time for breaking into MIT and illegally wiretapping their network?

But as the original quote said this will keep the story in the news a little longer. The attention span Swartz's case has gotten is rather large considering that normal attention span our news media generally has. Obviously, this is a new development in the plot and not the same old story of Swartz having killed himself. And in the end it is still going to be a tragedy and no amount of hacking or vandalizing of another website will change that.

This could keep Swartz on the news long enough for people to remember to care at the very least. Even if it is all posturing on their part there are much worse ways to draw the medias attention to a valid cause.

Which version of his memory are you talking about?

The fantasy version where he was facing prison time for violating a ToS?

Or the real version where he was facing prison time for breaking into MIT and illegally wiretapping their network?

Yeah, he TOTALLY h4x3d that system!

No dude. There was no "wiretapping", unless having your computer log into a public system you have access to suddenly counts as a "wiretapping". If that is "wire tapping", the I "wiretapped" an open wi-fi the other day when I needed to get onto the tubes from my tablet the other day. He set up a script on a computer on a network he had access to download papers that were free that he legally had access to. He violated the TOS that said you can't download all the papers. There was no hacking involved. I could have done that "hack" I am by no means a programmer. It was about as bad as scanning full books at the library and handing out the copies to children.

Should he have been smacked for for it? Sure. He probably earned a misdemeanor with 10 hours of community services. Threatening the dude with more jail time than if he had gone out and raped a child or beaten a woman half to death? That is complete completely and totally fucking insane. The justice system is horribly broken. You can steal a few billion dollars, game the stock market, do inside trading for millions, etc, and you can expect to go to a prison resort for a couple of months. Download some public academic papers off a public network in violation of a TOS, and suddenly the justice department treats you like they just caught you raping a child.

Don't get me wrong, Anonymous is dumb. There antics are pointless, and likely counter productive as they delegitimization a serious issue with their theatrics. There is however a serious issue.

This could keep Swartz on the news long enough for people to remember to care at the very least. Even if it is all posturing on their part there are much worse ways to draw the medias attention to a valid cause.

Which version of his memory are you talking about?

The fantasy version where he was facing prison time for violating a ToS?

Or the real version where he was facing prison time for breaking into MIT and illegally wiretapping their network?

Yeah, he TOTALLY h4x3d that system!

No dude. There was no "wiretapping", unless having your computer log into a public system you have access to suddenly counts as a "wiretapping". If that is "wire tapping", the I "wiretapped" an open wi-fi the other day when I needed to get onto the tubes from my tablet the other day. He set up a script on a computer on a network he had access to download papers that were free that he legally had access to. He violated the TOS that said you can't download all the papers. There was no hacking involved. I could have done that "hack" I am by no means a programmer. It was about as bad as scanning full books at the library and handing out the copies to children.

Should he have been smacked for for it? Sure. He probably earned a misdemeanor with 10 hours of community services. Threatening the dude with more jail time than if he had gone out and raped a child or beaten a woman half to death? That is complete completely and totally fucking insane. The justice system is horribly broken. You can steal a few billion dollars, game the stock market, do inside trading for millions, etc, and you can expect to go to a prison resort for a couple of months. Download some public academic papers off a public network in violation of a TOS, and suddenly the justice department treats you like they just caught you raping a child.

Don't get me wrong, Anonymous is dumb. There antics are pointless, and likely counter productive as they delegitimization a serious issue with their theatrics. There is however a serious issue.

You forgot about the breaking into a network closet and plugging into the network. If he had free access to log in, why did he have to do that again? The guy you quoted said nothing about hacking.